Vehicle routing for urban snow plowing operations

摘要

A model is presented with two heuristic solution approaches for the problem of snow plowing related to winter road maintenance in Canada. It is based on a mathematical optimization for the routing of vehicles in urban areas and determines a set of routes, each performed by a single vehicle that starts and ends at the district's depot, such that all road segments are serviced while satisfying a set of operational constraints and minimizing time. Extensions of the model are discussed. Two objectives are considered: A hierarchical objective and a make span objective. The resulting mode is based on a multi-commodity network flow structure to impose the connectivity of the route traversed by each vehicle. (30 refs.)